This is odd, but General David McKiernan has been fired as commander in charge of the Afghan theater, and replaced by General Stanley McChrystal.
The claim is that McChrystal, with a special ops background, is better suited to the conflict, but this has unfolded very quickly.
Note that McChrystal is hip deep in the Pat Tillman friendly fire coverup, as well as allegations of torture in Iraq.
No clue as to what is going on here.
If you’ve been following the saga of the delays of the EADS A400M military transport program, it’s clear that the main thing holding up the testing of the aircraft is problems with its massive (10,000+ hp) turboprop engines.
It has now been revealed that this holdup is primarily the result of a bookkeeping error:
Although the A400M program has generally been running late, the pacing item since last year has been the engine – and the principal problem was a failure by Europrop International (EPI), the consortium behind the TP400-D6 engine, to recognize, until little more than a year ago, that the software in the full authority digital engine control (Fadec) did not meet European civil aviation standards.
EPI was basically working to military standards, in which Fadec software is considered to be validated by testing. Civil authorities additionally require a tightly disciplined software development process, in which every change, from the first line of the first version, is documented and traceable. Once the problem surfaced, there was nothing to be done but to go back and start again.
While I generally find system engineering, where you have some anal-retentive bloke going over the specs with a microscope, to be a pain in the ass, I acknowledge that they are needed now and again, but there don’t appear to have been any on this project.
So, the details are out, and we have a big, confusing, and sprawling story from a big confusing, and sprawling building, the Pentagon.
Here are some links, and some things that I find noteworthy.
Specific programs:
With $439 million budgeted, the USAF is definitely going full speed on the tanker replacement bidding.
The Next Generation Bomber and the F-136 alternate JSF engine are on the chopping block, and the Gerald Ford class aircraft carrier has been delayed a year to work out the bugs on its electric catapults.
Star Wars takes a hit, with both the multiple kill vehicle and the airborne laser being canceled.
UAV’s did very well, with the Raven (shown) getting over 700 orders.
Aviation:
The DEW Line has a rundown.
Classified:
The Pentagon classified budget is now, up above $50 billion, which, on its own, makes the black programs something like the 3rd largest military budget in the world.
US Army:
spending on Helos is up, as are both unmanned vehicles and the number of active duty soldiers.
Navy:
We already know the story, cancellation of the DDG-100, restart of the Brukes, and continued procurement of the LCS, more here, here, and here.
Short version, it’s a generally down, but the Navy has done OK.
USAF
Basically, talk to the deer.
The USAF did not fare well, with the end of the F-22 and C-17 production lines, underfunding of the Air Force One replacement, the Joint Dual-Role Air Dominance Missile (JDRADM), and the follow on to the Predator drone, and the cancellation of the TSAT satellite system.
Cost Guard:
Not the Pentagon, it’s technically in the Department of Commerce, but its budget is up by about 3%.
Well, I asked for background on the Georgian mutiny, and I just got it.
This wasn’t a coup attempt. This was a mutiny in the classic sense of the term, with an armored brigade (!) being ordered to take action against peaceful demonstrators, and the commander, Colonel Mamuka Gorgiashvili, with, one assumes, at least the tacit the consent of his subordinates refused to deploy against peaceful protesters.
He defied orders and remained in barracks.
This is probably significant, the state security apparatus has been a bulwark of Saakashvili rule, but it is by no means an attempt to disrupt the NATO maneuvers or a coup.
But I am not sure what it is, so the report of a tank battalion mutinies in Georgia is concerning, but I do not know what it means.
I still believe that the Russians have thoroughly penetrated the Georgian state security apparatus, so I don’t see this as being part of a Russian backed coup. It would have been more extensive and better organized if it had.
It is likely, however, that the Russians were aware of what was going on before the Georgians, and certainly they view the events with no small amount of schadenfreude, but I think that whatever happened here had a lot more to do with what is going on in Georgia than with Russia.
That being said, I have yet to see anyone, anywhere give more specifics than, there was a mutiny, and the Georgians accused the Russians.
Perhaps there is something to be found on Georgian or Russian language sites, but I can’t read either tongue.
My guess would be that there are elements in the Georgian military not happy with the NATO exercises, but that is only a very uninformed guess.
The partially completed Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag was sold by the Ukraine to China a few years back, and it was thought that it would be converted to a casino.
Well Galrahn came across photos of the ship being moved across the Dalian shipyard in what appears to be a prelude toward bringing the hull up to operational standards.
My guess is that it will never see operational service, but that it will be used for training and development of an indigenous carrier capability.
And this is a deep cultural problem, not a simple case of a penny wise and pound foolish mistake.
What is going on is that both the Army and the USAF operate models of the Predator drone, but the Army’s loss rate is much lower because the USAF has refused to incorporate an auto-landing system on their UAVs:
Outgoing Pentagon acquisition czar John Young sharply criticized the Air Force today in his last meeting with reporters, saying the service had refused to budget for auto-landing gear for Predator UAVs even though the Air Force has lost a substantial portion of these to landing accidents. The new undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, Ash Carter, was sworn in this afternoon.
Young said the Air Force has lost one-third of the 183 Predators it has bought, and one third of those have crashed because of ground control issues. (Young’s spokesman, Chris Isleib, later sent an email to reporters slightly changing the numbers. “Since 1994 the Air Force has procured 195 Predators. 65 have been lost due to Class A mishaps,” he said.) Isleib added that of the 65 mishaps, 36 percent are laid at the door of human error and “many of those attributable to ground station problems.” About 15 percent of the total was destroyed during the landing phase, Isleib clarified in his email. (For a very human and honest portrayal of the difficulties of flying a Predator, catch this briefing by a NASA pilot who has flown them.)
Young said he told the Air Force to “move as fast as possible to auto-land.” A clearly irritated undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics told reporters “it will not surprise you that the Air Force is resisting this.” No cost estimates are available yet for equipping the Predator fleet with auto-land.
Young drew a sharp contrast with the Army’s Shadow UAV, saying it had lost very few aircraft to landing mishaps because it possesses auto-land capability.
What is going on here is a calculus that is very close to the USAF’s raison d’etre.
The air force is about pilots flying things, and pilots land what they fly, so if you add an auto-land system, then why do you need a pilot, as opposed to some sort of weapons system operator, who might *gasp* even be an enlisted man…..horrors!
Another example of why spinning off the USAF as an independent service has not served the military, or the taxpayer, well.
Only this time, as opposed to being a proposal in the milblogosphere, it’s a retired Marine corps officer, Paul Kane on the OP/ED pages of the New York Times.
I agreed with it then, and I agree with it now.
He also suggests that the services abandon up or out, where officers are discharged if they get passed over for promotion twice, which is a good idea too.
Up or out tends to create sycophants, because having a poor review given out of enmity can destroy a career, and is one reason that our current military is so top heavy (1 officer per 5 enlisted men, as opposed to the 1:10 it had through most of its history).
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is looking at a winged recoverable booster (paid subscription required) for a rapid response satellite launcher.
Considering the history here, the ruinously expensive and sometimes lethal space shuttle, I’m dubious.
Reusable does not seem to equal cheaper, or more reliable in space boosters.
It appears that the impetus to get this all started was the US Pershing II, whose actively radar guided MARV produced a CEP of something under 30m much less than the 75m beam of a Nimitz flight deck.
In any case, this is a good read, and if this technology has been in development since the early 1980s, I can see no reasons that the Chinese are not near the point of being able to deploy such a system.
Modern processors allow for sensor fusion from a number of data sources, and a CVBG puts out a lot of signature.
In any case, I tend to figure that warships these days fall into 2 categories: Submarines, and targets.
Gates just issued a statement urging legislators to look beyond their districts, but the important statement comes further down:
The thing that is important is to reinforce within the building, in terms of dealing with the Hill, that there is a chain of command,’ he said. ‘Once the decision is made, and particularly once the president signs off on the budget, then there needs to be discipline about people not conducting guerilla warfare against decisions the president has made.
(emphasis mine)
He is telling the generals that the decisions have been made, and behind the scenes lobbying will be punished.
This has been a consistent problem with the Pentagon for at least 15 years, and it has only become worse in the last 8 or so, and it needs to be shut down.
Military officers should answer questions honestly, but the lobbying for weapons systems is simply corrupt and a repudiation of civilian control.
Good for Bob Gates for putting the Generals on notice.
You can read his speech, but here is the nickel tour:
Additions:
Reductions:
Surprise, he’s saying that Dick Cheney’s brainchild when he was Bush I’s Sec Def, using the Department of Defense as a way to reward political contributions privatizing functions and expanding the number of contractors, does not work.
Kills:
I love his money quote:
Sixth, and finally, we will significantly restructure the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. We will retain and accelerate the initial increment of the program to spin out technology enhancements to all combat brigades. However, I have concluded that there are significant unanswered questions concerning the FCS vehicle design strategy. I am also concerned that, despite some adjustments, the FCS vehicles – where lower weight, higher fuel efficiency, and greater informational awareness are expected to compensate for less armor – do not adequately reflect the lessons of counterinsurgency and close quarters combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current vehicle program, developed nine years ago, does not include a role for our recent $25 billion investment in the MRAP vehicles being used to good effect in today’s conflicts.
Further, I am troubled by the terms of the current contract, particularly its very unattractive fee structure that gives the government little leverage to promote cost efficiency. Because the vehicle part of the FCS program is currently estimated to cost over $87 billion, I believe we must have more confidence in the program strategy, requirements, and maturity of the technologies before proceeding further.
(emphasis mine)
This translates to, “They are not worth much in a counter-insurgency scenario, and once again the Lead System Integrator (LSI) model of procurement has given us an overpriced piece of crap.”
*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
Kind of cool.
H/t Galrahn.
France and the UK are set to qualify a new 40mm case telescoped ammunition cannon for their armored vehicles, and they are looking to be at System Readiness Level 8 (“Actual System Completed and Qualified Through Test and Demonstration”) by year’s end, with the cannon and ammunition qualified some time in 2012.
When I looked at this system last year, it looked promising, with a much simplified ammunition feed, no need to eject cases, and more punch in the same volume.
CTA International (CTAI), a “joint venture of BAE Systems and Nexter” say that this is compact enough to be a drop in replacement for the Bradley’s 25mm Bushmaster cannon, but that it will pack the punch of a 50mm cannon.
Rather unsurprisingly, Northrop Grumman’s design for the “Next Generation Bomber” (NGB) looks rather a lot like the cranked kite concept that has been floating around for some time.
Among other things, it’s supposed to provide much lower drag, and better high altitude performance than the original B-2, giving improved range, though some of the additional range appears to be at the expense of weapons load: word is that payload is in the 20,000 pound range, or about ½ that of its predecessors.
There is an additional interesting bit of information in another Northrop-Grumman patent application, which shows the aircraft with a mustache.
Given the stealth requirements for the aircraft, and the fact that it will generally be operating at high altitude at relatively high mach numbers, the obvious conclusion is that this is a retractable canard, much like the Tu-144 Charger and the Mirage Milan. (in the latter, the retractable canards were actually called a “mustache”)
The advantages on takeoff and landing are clear, giving a whole lot more pitch authority than is generally available with a short coupled tailless design, which can increase max takeoff and landing weight, decrease takeoff and landing speeds, and shrink the landing gear and breaking systems.
SAAB has cut a deal to integrate the front end of the Selex Galileo Vixen AESA radar with the existing back end PS-05/A radar for the Gripen NG.
This replaces the Thales radar on the NG demonstrator, which Thales does not intend to make available for production.
Which is generally considered the bottom bound for viability as a battlefield weapon.
This is significant because an electric laser should be a lot easier to handle than the chemical lasers, which require very large quantities of noxious and hard to handle chemicals.
They are looking take it out of the lab and hit a test range in about a year.
You may, or not, be aware of the concept of reactive armor.
It’s used on a fair number of armored vehicles out there: It’s a box with explosives in it, and when struck by a round, it explodes, dissipating the jet from a shaped charge or altering the path of a kinetic energy penetrator dart.
Well, someone has taken the next forseeable step, and submitted a patent application for an exploding bullet proof vest:
As Dave Barry would say, “I am NOT making this up!”
Check out patent number 6474213, Reactive stiffening armor system, which proposes:
A reactive armor structure having an outer layer and a reactive element adjacent to and integral with the outer layer is provided. The reactive element provides an amount of support to the outer layer effective to restrain movement of the outer layer and to delay fracture of the outer layer when the outer layer is impacted by a projectile.
I wonder what happens when a limb is in the path of the detonation of:
10. The structure of claim 1, wherein the explosive material has a detonation velocity of from about 2 km/s to about 5 km/s.
…
24. The structure of claim 15 wherein said reactive material comprises a material selected from the group consisting of TNT, RDX, Comp-B, Octol, and nitromethane.
I’m not sure if it would be worse to be the guy in the armor, or the guy standing next to the guy in the armor.
It appears that Boeing is looking to extend the life of the F-15 Eagle with a technological update (also here and here) called the Silent Eagle.
The two most obvious changes are creating weapons bays in the conformal fuel tanks and the canted tails, though it is also reported that there is a fair amount of radar absorbent material (RAM) added, including a frangable gun cover that hearkens back to how armorers treated the guns in WWII.
There are apparently no radar blockers in the inlets, even though Boeing has extensive experience with them in the F/A-18 E/F, because of potential export issues.
This implies that Boeing has decided (correctly IMHO) that they have no chance of selling these to the USAF, who have eyes for nothing for the F-22 and F-35.
They are suggesting a $100m unit price, though it is not made clear in any of the articles as to whether this is unit price, or fly-away cost.
The implication is that $100m will be cheaper than the F-35 JSF, and perhaps this is less an exercise to sell more F-15s than it is to sell more F/A-18E/Fs by implying that the JSF will break 9 figures in cost.
If they are implying this, they are probably right. The JSF shows a lot of signs of cost escalation and schedule slippage.
Powerpoint courtesy of The DEW Line, video of missile actuator courtesy of Boeing.
This may be a negotiating ploy because while they have announced plans to activate regiment of RS-24 missiles with MIRVs, they are also saying that they want to negotiate a new arms control agreement.
Not sure how much is solid plans, and how much is gamesmanship.